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Harvard Business School: “How KKR Got More by Giving Ownership to the Factory Floor: ‘My Kids Are Going to College!'”

The following is an excerpt from an article originally published by Harvard Business School, featuring Ownership Works Founder Pete Stavros:

“One thing that stuck with Pete Stavros from the dinner-table conversations of his youth was that capitalism seemed fundamentally broken for his father, who earned an hourly wage working construction. The incentive was not there for Stavros’ dad and his peers to try to make their company succeed: Instead, when the company wouldn’t pay them for their lunch hour, they intentionally scheduled deliveries to show up midday, when there wasn’t anyone working to receive them, sabotaging the project.

‘That’s what I remember from growing up, this constant conflict and fight over hours,’ recounts Stavros, a partner at private equity firm KKR, in a new series of Harvard Business School case studies that detail his radical experiment at an Illinois garage door company to give blue-collar workers like his father a share of the profits and get them to think like owners. The case studies, written by HBS Professor Dennis Campbell and assistant professor Ethan Rouen, describe the sea change in motivation that happens when employees feel that their work matters and can share in the rewards their improved performance creates.”

Read the full article on Harvard Business School. 

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